Leopard Men in Naga Hills,1920

41

LEOPARD-MEN IN THE NAGA HILLS.

By J. H. HUTTON, I.C.S.

IN speaking of leopard-men I should like first of all to make it clear that I have taken the word leopard as the translation of the Naga words, because it is usually the leopard that is associated with Naga lycanthropists. The tiger, however, is also so associated, as well as one or perhaps more of the smaller cats. For all of these animals there is a generic term iD most Naga languages, and when a Sema Naga, for instance, speaks of angshu he may meanr a- leopard or a tiger, between which he makes no clear distinction, or eveD a smaller animal such as a clouded leopard, a caraca], or the golden cat. The same applies to the Angami Naga word tekhu. On the other hand the Chang Nagas have distinct words, and speak of a tiger as saonyu, regarding the leopard, kh6nkhii, as little less inconsiderable than a civet cat, khii.

All Naga tribes seem to regard the ultimate ancestry of man and the tiger (or leopard) as very intimately associated. The Angamis relate that in the beginning the first spirit, the first tiger, and the first man, were three sons of one mother, but whereas the man and the spirit looked after their mother with the greatest tenderness, the tiger was always snarling about the house giving trouble. Moreover, he ate his food raw, while the man ate his cooked, and the spirit his smoke-dried. At last the mother got tired of family squabbles, so put up a mark in the jungle and told the man ar,d the tiger to run to it, the one that touched it first being destined to live in villages, and the other to live in the forest ai,d jungle. By arrangement between the spirit and the man, the former shot an arrow at the mark while the other two were racing, and the man cried out that he had touched it. The tiger arrived while it still trembled from the blow, and being deceived went away angry to live in the jungle.

After this the man sent the cat to ask the tiger, when he killed a deer, to leave him a leg on the village wall, in virtue of their brotherhood. The cat got the message wrong and told the tiger to leave all the deer he killed, which started fiostility between the man and the tiger. This story is found in a more or less identical form among the Angami, Sema, Lhota, and Rengma Naga tribes, the Sema making the tiger search for the corpse of his dead mother to eat it.

Mant and the tiger are, however, still regarded as brothers, and if an Augami kills a tiger he says " the gods have killed a tiger in the jungle " and never " I have killed a tiger," while the priest of the village proclaims a day of abstention from work " on account of the death of an elder brother."

42 J. H. HUTTON.-Leopard-Men in the Naga Hills.

After killing a tiger or leopard the Angami wedges the mouth open with a stick and puts the head into running water, so that if the animal tries to tell the spirits the iname of the man who killed him, all that can be heard is aD inarticulate gurgling in the water. The Sema puts a stone, as well as a wedge, into the mouth to prevent the tiger lyin,g in wait for him after death and devouring him on their way to the abode of the dead, while he also becomes en.titled to wear a collar of boar's tusks, the iiksignia of a successful warrior, as though he had killed a man.

In some tribes whole clans are associated with the tiger; thus among the Clhangs the whole Hagiyang Sept of the Chongpu clan is in some vague way inatimately connected with tigers (not iin this case with leopards) and is apparently of lycanthropic tendencies. At the same time it is taboo for- all true Changs to touch tigers at all, far more to combine, as men of other tribes do, to hunt them. If a Chang meet a tiger in the jungle he will warn it to get out of the way before throwing a spear or shooting at it. Should he kill one he is under a taboo for thirty days, and treats the head in the same way as an Angami, putting it with its mouth wedged open under falling water.

The Chang will eat leopard flesh, but not of course that of the tiger. The Sema will eat neither, the Angami both-but it must be cooked outside the house.

When it comes to the practice of lycanthropy we find that tlwe Angami Nagas, though believing that the practice exists and can be acquired. do not indulge in it themselves. Like other tribes they believe in a village far to the east peopled solely by lycanthropists, a belief which is perhaps based on the claims of some clan like the Choingpu-Hagiyang of the Changs, in which all members of the community are believed to possess this faculty of taking tiger or other forms in a greater or less degree. But the Angami also believe in the existence of a spiing, by some said to be, of blood, or of reddish-coloured water, from which whoso drinks becomes a lycanthropist. They believe that the people of the neighbourhood know and shun this sprin,g, but that the danger to strangers is great. Moreover, when the children of that neighbourhood are peevish, it is customary, they say, to dip a blade of thatching- grass into the spring and give it to the child to suck. It stops his wailings, but he grows up a were-tiger. The Angami, however, does not practise lycanthropy himself, and the only Angami villages in which persons who do practise it are found, are those on the borders of the Sema country, where a large part of the population is Sema by origin. The Sema is an inveterate lycanthropist, and it is in that tribe that specific examples are the easiest to come by.

Both the An,gami and Sema agree in holding that there is no actual transformation of the body of the lycanthropist into a leopard. What he seems to do is to project his soul into a particular animal with which his human body also thus becomes very intimately associated. A leopard which is thus the recipient (from time to time) of a human soul may be recogaized by having five claws on each foot, and is called by the A.ngaini mavi (which might mean " real man ") and by the Semas

J. H. HuTTON.-leopard-Mlen in the Nagja Hills. 43

angshu amiki, an expressiona to which I will refer agaia. I have myself seen a leopard with dew-claws (making five instead of the usual four) killed in a Rengma village and at once asserted to be the recipient of a lycanthropist's projected soul. Incidentally I have seen, and followed in the soft bed of the Dayang River the tracks of a freak tiger which had apparently five toes on its fore-feet.

The lycanthropic spring in which the A-,gami believe is sometimes said to be situated in the Sema country, but the Semas give an entirely different account of the way in which they acquire the lyeanthropic habit.

The theory and symptoms are clear and recognizable, and differ perhaps from most lycanthropists in other parts of the world. lThe Sema undergoes no physicai transformation whatever. The " possession," if we may term it so, is not ordinarily induced by any external aid, but comes on at the bidding of spirits which may not be gairasaid, and unader whose influence the man possessed entirely loses his own volition in the matter. The faculty can, however, be acquired by very close and intimate association with some lycarathropist, sleeping in the same bed with him, eating from the same dish with him, and never leaving his side for a considerable period-two months is said to be the shorftest time in which the faculty can be acquired in this way. It can also be acquired, according to some, by being fed by a lycanthropist with chicken-flesh and ginger, which is given in successive collections of six, five, and three pieces of each together on crossed pieces of plantain leaf. It is dangerous, too, to eat food or drink that a lycanthropist has left unfinished, as the habit may thus be unwittingly acquired. The animal whose body the lycanthropist makes use of, though sometimes the tiger proper (abolangshu), is usually a leopard and is known as angshu amiki, a word which is said to be derived from the verb kemiki, meaning to wander alone ina the jungle for days together, since men who do this are most liable to the possession. It may be observed, however, that the root miki- also means " to bite."' Cowardly and worthless mena, if they acquire the habit, make use of the body of a red cat (angshu akinu, probably = Felis aurata, the golden cat). The habit is very far from desired. No one wants to be possessed by the habit, and it is, on the contrary, feared as a source of danger and a great weariness to the flesh.

The soul usually enters into the leopard during sleep and returns to thebhuman body with daylight, but it may remain in the leopard for several days at a time, in which case the human body, though conscious, is lethargic. It (i.e., the human body) goes to the fields and follows the usual routine of life, but is not able to com- municate intelligibly, or at any rate intelligenatly, with other persons until the possession expires for the time being. The soul, however, is more or less conscious of its experiences in leopard form and can to some extent remember and relate them whena it has returned to its human consciousness. During sleep the soul is the leopard

1 Incidentally, it also means " to tell lies."


with its full faculties, but when the human body is wide awake the soul is only semi-consciously, if at all, aware of its doings as a leopard, unless under the influence of some violent emotion experienced by the leopard.

The possession is accompanied by very severe pains and swellings in the knees, elbows and small of the back in the human body, both during and consequent on the possession. These pains are said to be sucb as would result from far and cor,tinuous marching or from remaining long periods in an unaccustomed position. During sleep at the time of possession the limbs move convulsively, as the legs of a dog move when, it is dreaming. A were-leopard of the Tizu Valley, in a paroxysm at such a time, bit one of his wife's breasts off. When the leopard is being hunted by men, the human body behaves like a lunatic, leaping and throwing itself about in its efforts to escape. Under these circumstances the relatives of the were-leopard feed bim up with ginger as fast as possible in order to make him more active, so that the leopard-body, on which his life depends, may have the agility to escape its pursuers.

Were-leopards are particularly liable to possession between the expiry of the old and the rising of the new moon. Those possessed are liable to a special sort of disease which is believed to attack tigers and leopards generally, but no human beings except were-leopards. When the leopard is wounded, corresponding wounds appear upon the human body of the were-leopard, usually in the form of boils, and when the leopard is killed the human body dies also. It is, however, possible apparently for the soul to throw off the possession permanently as old age is approached. The father of Inato, Chief of Lumitsami, got rid of the habit by touching the flesh of a leopard. The village had killed one and he carried home the head. After that, he explained, he could no longer associate with the leopard kind. It is generally held, and doubtless not without some substratum of truth, that a man under the influence of the possession can be quieted by feeding him with chicken dung. Probably this produces nausea.

Possession is not confined to men. Women, also become were-leopards and are far more destructive as such than men are. Of men, those wbo have taken heads are most dangerous, and are believed to kill as many men as leopards or tigers as they have done as warriors.

The actions of the leopard's body and of the human body of tbe were-leopard are closely associated. As has been noticed, if the human limbs are conafined the leopard's freedom of action is restricted, and troublesome were-leopards are said to be sometimes destroyed in this way.

On one occasion the elders of a large Ao village (Ungma) came to me for permission to tie up a certain mana in the village, while they bunted a leopard which had been giving a great deal of trouble. The man in, question, who was, by.the way, a Christian convert, also appeared to protest against the action of the village elders. He said that he was very sorry that he was a were-leopard; be did not want to be

J. H. HUTTON.-Leopard-Men in the Naga Hills. 45

one, anad it was not his fault, but seeing that he was one, he supposed that his leopard body must kill to eat, and if it did not, both the leopard and himself would die. He said that if he were tied up the leopard would certainly be killed and he would die. To tie him up and bunt the leopard was, he said, sheer murder. In the end I gave leave to the elders to tie the man up and hunt the leopard, but told them that if the man died as a result of their killing the leopard, whoever had speared the leopard would of -course be tried, and no doubt hanged, for murder, and the elders committed for abetment of the same. On this the elders unanimously refused to take advantage of my permission to tie up the man. I was sorry for this, though I had foreseen it, as it would have been an interesting experiment.

My information as to were-leopards was obtained directly either from were- leopards themselves or their relatives, friends, and chiefs. Unfortunately I have not so far succeeded in seeing a man actually at the moment of possession. I have had the marks of wounds shown me by men who claim that they were the result of wounds inflicted on their leopard bodies. Kiyezu of Nikoto, now Chief of Kiyezu- Nagami, who used to be a were-leopard in his youth, can show the marks on the front and the back of his leg above the knee where he had been shot, as a leopard, long ago by a sepoy of the Military Police outpost at Wokha with a Martini rifle. The marks, in corresponding positions on the front and back of the thigh, looked like marks caused by bad boils. Zukiya of Kolhopu village showed me fairly fresh marks about his waist which he said were two months old, and caused by shot which had hit his leopard body, and the marks looked as though they might have been caused by shot. Ghokwi, the Chief of Zukiya's village, said that Zukiya was in the habit of pointing out the remains of pigs and dogs killed by him in leopard form, so that their owners might gather up what remained. He said that he had a quarrel with his own brother, one of whose pigs he had killed and eaten by accident. Ghokwi mentioned the names of various people whose animals Zukiya had killed and eaten.' Sakhuto, Chief of K-huivi, showed a wound in his back which was quite new on March 1st, 1913, which he said was the result of some one having shot at him when he was in leopard form a few days before. The wound in the human body does not, under such circumstances, appear at once. It affects the same place in the human body as the original wound did the leopard, but takes several days to appear.

In March, 1919, an Angami interpreter, Resopu of Cheswezuma, at that time working with me in camp, wounded a large tiger near Melomi. Three or four days later the Head Interpreter of the Deputy-Commissioner's staff, a very well-known, highly intelligent and reliable man, Nihu of Kohima, happened to meet a sick Sema road muharrir, Saiyi of Zumethi, being carried home. The man, who was employed near Melomi, complained of having had an accident, but on being pressed several

1 According to some a were-leopard who kills cattle may be found in the morning to have bits of their flesh sticking to his teeth.


times for details, admitted that he had no external injury that could be seen, but was suffering from the effects of the wounds inflicted by Resopu on his tiger form, having very severe pains in his neck or shoulder and abdomen and being haunted by the horrid smell of rotting flesh.

I have known personally a large number of Semas who are, or claim to be, were- leopards or were-tigers. The Headman of Chipoketami is one; Chekiye, Chief of Aichi-Sagami, is another; Inaho, Chief of Melahomi, a man of great physical strength and endurance, is perhaps the most notorious. Gwovishe of Tsukohomi and his daughter Sukheli were only known to me by repute, Gwovishe's son Chekiye of Lukammi more intimately. Kusheli of Litsammi, a second woman were-leopard, has her home inside the frontier, and has a most unenviable reputation. The Sakhuto above mentioned died on July 19th, 1916, as a result of the leopard which was occupied by his projected soul' having been shot by Sakhalu of Sakhalu on June 30th of that year. It was reported to the writer on July 4th that Sakhalu had shot a were-leopard, but it was then believed to be identical witb one Khozhumo of Kukishe, and it was expected that he would die when the news reached him, as the death of the man concerned does not actually take place till he hears that his leopard body has been killed. It was, however, Sakhuto who claimed the leopard and who had the honour of dying to prove his claim. The son of Yemithi of Lizotomi, whose leopard-cat body was killed at Sagami, heard the news as he was returning to his village and expired on the spot for no other reason-a curious example of the power of the Sema mind over the Sema body.

Both Inato of Lumitsami and Inaho of Melahomi related to me independently how, when they were going up together from Pusumni to Lotesami, Inato managed to persuade Inaho to show his tiger form. The latter lingered for a mroment behind, and suddenly a huge tiger jumped out on the path in front of Inato with a roar and an angry waving of his tail. In a flash Inato had raised his gun, but the tiger-Inaho jumped in time to avoid the shot, and disappeared. Since this Inaho has had an excellent excuse for tefusing to show his tiger form to anyone at all.

It is also told of Kusheli of Litsammi that she cured her husband of making sceptical and impertinent references to her lycanthropic peregrinations by appearirng before him in leopard form. His name is Yemunga and he was returning from a business deal in Chatongbung when suddenly he saw a leopard blocking the path. Guessing it was his wife he laughed at it and told it to go away. It went on and blocked the path a little further ahead. This time he threatened to spear it, and it slid ofT into the jungle, only to reappear behind him unexpectedly with a sudden growl. This frightened him, and he ran home as fast as he could, the leopard pursuing till near the village, where it disappeared. When he entered his house his wife at once started to mock him, asking why he was perspiring so and whethe?r he had seen a leopard.

1 The Sema word is aghongu, which primarily = "shadow," but is used normally in Sema eschatology for the soul of a dead person.


The Sema were-tiger, or reputed were-tiger, with whom I was best acquainted was Chekiye, Chief of Lukammi and a. son of the famous Chief Gwovishe of Tsiikoh6mi. He would never admit to me that he was a lyeanthropist, but none of his Sema acquaintances ever doubted but that his reputation was well deserved.' He came nearest to admitting to me that he was a were-tiger on the occasion of a tiger hunt in which I took part at Mokokchung on March 29th, 1916. Ungma village ringed some tigers-there were certainly two full-grown animals and two three-quarter- grown cubs present. The old tiger himself broke out early in the beat, mauling a man on his way; shortly after which Chekiye turned up, armed with a spear, but no shield. The tigress broke near him and came within a few feet of him, bit and mauled his next-door neighbour and went in again. Chekiye, when remonstrated with for having stood quietly by and not having speared the animal, said: " I did not like to spear her as I thought she was probably a friend of mine." After the beat he stated that the tigress killed was a woman of Murromi, a transfrontier village in unexplored country where all the population are said to be were-tigers. He also explained that the tiger in a beat was really far more frightened than even the hunters themselves, which is probably true enough, and shrewdly observed that the use of the tail, which is stiflened up and out behind and swayed at the end from side to side, is to make the grass wave behind the moving tiger, so that the position of the tiger's body is mistaken and the aim disturbed accordingly, an observation which seems to be at least true of the result of the waving tail. It was reported that he claimed in private to be identical with the tiger that first escaped, but he would not admit this to me, and there was indeed another and more likely candidate to this rather doubtful honour. This was an Ao named Imtong-lippa of Changki. While this beat was going on three miles away, he was behaving like a lunatic in the house of one of the hospital servants at Mokochung. During his possession he identified himself with one of the tigers being hunted and stated that one of them was wounded and speared; that he himself was hit with a stick (the Ao method of beating entailed the throwing of sticks and stones and abuse incessantly to make the tiger come out). He laid a rolled mat to represent a fence and six times leapt across it. He ate ginger and drank a whole bamboo " chunga " (about a bucketful) of water, after which he said that he had escaped with two other tigers after crossing a stream, and was hiding in a hole, but that one tigress, a transfrontier woman, had been speared in the side (in point of fact she was speared in the neck) and had been left behind and would die. (We shot the tigress in the end.) He said there were four tigers surrounded. Chekiye said six. Four actually were seen, however, two grown and two half- or three-quarters grown. There may have been others, but it is not very likely. Some sixteen cattle had been killed in two days. This account I took down after returning from the beat, on the same day,

He was, however, once caught out in a pure and demonstrable romance by one of my Sema interpreters.


from an eye-witness of Imtong-lippa's exhibition, which was seen and watched by a large number of men both reliable and otherwise in their accounts of it.

I have given these details as they show clearly the Naga beliefs on the subject. Of course among the Semas the idea of what one might describe as the projectability of the soul is very pronounced. It is a common thing for a sick person to ascribe his sickness to the absence of his soul from his body, and under such circumstances he takes food and drink and goes to the field or any other places where he thinks his soul has got left behind and summons it, calling it, of course, by his own name. When it has arrived he comes slowly home, bringing bis soul behind him. A case once came up before me for adjudication in which an old man named Nikiye, who had been ill for some time, went to the fields to call his soul. It came, and he was climbing slowly back to the village occasionally calling " Nikiye, Nikiye! " over his shoulder to make sure that the truant soul was following. Unfortunately a personal enemy had observed him, and lay in wait in the bush by the path with a thick stick. As the old man tottered by he sprang from his ambush with a yell, and brought down his stick with a thud on the path immediately behind Nikiye's heels. The frightened soul fled incontinently, and the old fellow himself died of the loss of it two days later. To avoid losing the soul a Sema, who makes a temporary shelter away from home, always burns it on leaving it, lest his soul, having taken a fancy to it, should stray back there by itself.

To return to lycanthropy in particular, the practice described, as distinct from the belief, seems particularly associated in Assam with the immigration from the North-West-that is, from the direction of Nepal and Thibet. The Changs probably have an admixture of Singpho blood, and the Singphos are know-n to have come from that direction; so, too, the Kacharis who, like the Changs, have a clan of tiger men, and call it the Mosa-aroi, and the Meches who have a corresponding clan called Masha-aroi, which also goes into mourning for the death of a tiger-both came from the north of the Brahmaputra. Among the Garos also the practice is found, and they too came from the same direction. On the other hand the Khasis, who seem to belong to a different stock-perhaps to the Kol-Mon-Annam race, and to have come from the east-say they believe in the existence of tiger men, but appear to have absorbed the idea from the Garos, who are their neighbours, and not to have possessed it as an indigenous idea, nor to indulge in, or believe that they indulge in, the practice themselves. The Angami, who also does not practise lycanthropy, again seem to have immigrated into the Naga Hills from the south-east and to be intimately connected with the Bontoc and Igorot of Luzon in the Philippines. In other ways, however, particularly in language, the Sema is connected with the Angami, though on the other hand there are points of culture which keep suggesting a connection between the Sema and the Garo. One of them is the use of Y-shaped posts to celebrate feasts given to the village, similar wooden posts being used by the Garo, though he is at present entirely isolated from the Sema, while the Kachari ruins


at Dimapux contain the same bifurcated monuments in stone. Perhaps the ex- planation is that the present Sema tribe is the result of the amalgamation of a small Angami element which has imposed itself upon another stock, a process which the Sema tribe itself is still carrying on with regard to its neighbours to the east at a very rapid rate, a Sema chief or adventurer grafting himself and a few followers on to a Sangtam or Yachungr -illage; this in a generation or less becomes entirely Sema in language and polity, though no doubt retaining its former beliefs and certainly retaining much of its former ceremonial.

The theory that this form of lycanthropy comes from a l,orthern source is perhaps supported by the fact that the form which the belief takes in Burma and Malay, as well as in the plains of India, seems to turn on an actual metamorphosis of the body. Mr. Grant-Brown, writing in the Institute's Journal in 1911 about the TamaiRs, a tribe of Chinese origin in the Upper Chindwin Valley, notes that they transform themselves into tigers by making water and then rolling naked on the earth they have wetted.

A nearer approach to the Naga belief appears to exist in Malay, but here again actual metamorphosis seems to be essenatial to that form of lycanthropy. Mr. O'May, writing in Folklore in 1910 (Vol. XXI, p. 371) says that in Burma and Sumatra a quite ordinary man may turn into a tiger in the evenaing without anty fuss, and he goes on to describe a Malay game of turning into a civet cat, inr which a boy is actually hypnotized and caused to behave like a civet cat, becoming (as the Naga were- leopard does) much exhausted when the trance is over. So, too, Skeat mentions the case of one Haji 'Abda]lah caught naked in a tiger trap in Korinchi State in Sumatra (Malay Magic, p. 160-163), while Messrs. Skeat and Blagden note that the were-tigers of the Malay Peninsula (most urlike the Nagas, here) cannot be shot in their metamorphosed condition (Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula, p. 227).

Skeat also records the inverse of the Naga case, in the process by which a possession of the human body by a tiger spirit is invoked to cast out another and less powerful possessing spirit (Malay Magic, p. 436), and similarly (p. 455) the induction of a monkey spirit inlto a girl who, while thus possessed, is capable of the most remarkable climbing feats.

In all these cases, however, the practice differs from that of the Nagas in that either metamorphosis takes place, or it is the animal spirit which possesses the human body, not the other way round. For with the Naga were-leopard the soul is merely projected into the body of the animal, while rno metamorphosis of the human, body takes place nor is any sort of hypnotism employed-unless, indeed, it be self- hypnotism, and involuntary at that.

Sir James Frazer (G.B., Vol. XI, p. 196) gives instances from Asia of the location of the external soul in animals for the purposes of ensuxing its safety or for enhancing -the power of the magician. Neither of these two motives appears to influence the Naga were-wolf in any way. It is recogu,ized on all hands that the practice is a ,dangerous one, and it is said to be rapidly decreasing owing to the increased number

VOL. L. E


of guns in the district, which make it still more dangerous thana it was. Lycanthropy is not practised by wizards, as were-tigers are, as far as I know, invariably ordinary men wbo do not claim to supernatural powers of any sort. The nearest parallels seem to come from Africa, and Sir James Frazer mentions several beliefs from Nigeria which resemble the Naga belief pretty closely. One other point may be added. In some cases lycailthropy among Nagas seems to be hereditary, or perhaps rather one should say that a tendeicy towards it may be inherited, as ina the case of many diseases; and indeed Mr. Baring-Gould' described lycan,thropy as a disease, associating it in this respect with the mania for cattle-maiming and with a morbid desire to devour human corpses. Cases of both of these I have met with ina the Naga Hills, the latter, however, being regarded by the Nagas themselves as symptomatic of extreme insanity; whereas the former is, like lyc.anthropy, merely a vice which is liable to be very troublesome to the neighbours of those that practise it.2

Note on Ao Naga belief as to a certain form of relationship between men and leopards.-One Longrizibba of Yongimsen village was haunted by a leopard which very frequently came at night and slept outside his house close to that place by the wall nearest which Longrizibba himself was sleeping inside. Wlhenever the leopard came, Longrizibba fell into a deep sleep and could not be aroused by his wife, even though he had previously sharpened his spear with a view to killing the animal. Then he took to sleeping on the platform at the back of his house, when the leopard took to sleeping underneath. On one occasion water was poured on to it, but without discouraging it.

After this and other efforts to get rid of it, Longrizibba induced the leopard to leave him alone by the sacrifice of a dog. This took place in 1919 when I was on leave, and my attention was drawn to the case by Mr. Mills, Subdivisional Officer of Mokokchung, one of whose interpreters saw the leopard outside the house at night.

Apparently such associations of men with leopards are, according to the Ao tribe, fairly frequent. The relations between the man and the leopard are normally quite friendly and mutually harmless until on an appointed day they are brought to an end by the leopards devouring the man.

If the haunting is caused by some ceremonial fault on the man's part, it can be ended by a ceremony which includes the surrender of a cloth, a dao sling and a piece of the man's own hair. If, however, the relationship dates from a man's infancy and has no cause that can be specified, he is unable to break off the relationship.

A mountain with twin-peaks is pointed out by Ao as a meeting place of tiger- men.

1 Book of Were-Wolvei. 2 Professor Elliot Smith tells me that Egyptian boys practise lycanthropy in association

with the forms of the common cat. A bibliography on the subject of lyeanthropy will be found at the end of Mr. McLennan's article in the ninth edition of the Encycloicedia Britannica, but it relates almost entirely to the European races.


The practice of surrendering to the leopard a piece of the haunted man's hair is paralleled in the Chang tribe by the practice, when a man loses himself in the forest, of cutting off a little hair and putting it in the fork of a tree for the rock python which is believed to have caused him to lose himself. After this the lost man is able to find his way home. Semas under similar conditions cut a piece off the fringe of their cloth instead of their hair.

Colonel SHAKESPEAR, C.M.G., D.S.O., who was unaable to be presen,t at the reading of this paper, sends the following observations:

Although I have a fairly extensive knowledge of the tribes living in the hills of Mariipur, which adjoin those dealt with by the author, and a better knowledge of the Lushais living further to the south, I have never come across the type of lycanthropy described by Mr. Hutton. I have never met anyone who admitted being, or was known to be, a man tiger. In all the tales I have heard from natives of those hills and also from Gurkhas, it has always been a case of metamorphosis. The idea of soul projection is, however, found among the Lushais, I have described it in The Lushei Kuki Clans, pp. 111, 112. There the spiritp or Khawhring is an unlsought ar,d generally ur,welcome guest in a woman's body, whence it issues forth ar,d takes possession of other women and the possession is infectious and hereditary; in these particulars there is a resemblance to the Sema form of lycanthropy. The idea that the soul and body can be separated without death ensuing at once is common to many tribes in these hills. Airong the Aimol, the priest, after a child's birth, summons the soul to take possession of its new dwelling, the child's body. Among the Lushais the father and mother keep quiet for seven days after a child's birth, for fear of injuring the little one's soul, which is thought to hover and perch like a bird on their bodies and clothes. The Lushai also have the belief that a man may temporarily lose his soul, and that the wanderer may be called back by the performance of the proper ceremony.

The mentiona of the Y-shaped posts erected to commemorate feasts given to ths villagers reminds me of the posts seen in Khawtlanng villages, as shown opposite page 65, Lushei Kuki Clans, which are put up for the same purpose.

E,-2

Documents

Leopard Men in Naga Hills,1920